Continuing my survey of George Eliot’s Adam Bede, I now turn to a second important female lead: Hetty Sorrel. Ultimately (that is, by the end of the book), I hope to make some conclusion about the author through her treatment of these two characters.

The introduction of the young Hetty into the plot of the novel doesn’t come for several chapters (or around 60 pages in my edition). The change in scope toward adding this character represents—in my reading of the text—a change most of all in tone. At this point in the plot, we have seen the calm and rational rejection by Dinah of Seth Bede, relative to male-female relations. However, Hetty’s opportunities for romantic consorting seem to be founded on—and cause for—emotional distress.

Enter Captain Donnithorne, in Chapter 7, “The Dairy”:

Hetty blushed a deep rose-colour when Captain Donnithorne entered the dairy and spoke to her; but it was not at all a distressed blush, for it was inwreathed with smiles and dimples, and with sparkles from under long curled dark eye-lashes; and while her aunt was discoursing to him about the limited amount of milk that was to be spared for butter and cheese so long as the calves were not all weaned, and the large quantity but inferior quality of milk yielded by the short-horn, which had been bought on experiment, together with other matters which must be interesting to a young gentleman who would one day be a land-lord, Hetty tossed and patted her pound of butter with quite a self-possessed, coquettish air, slily conscious that no turn of her head was lost.

Eliot then goes into a long description of Hetty’s beauty, complete with her characteristic personal views on the matter, with direct address to the reader. And as the commentary progresses, I get the feeling that the author is tantalizing the audience with will-she-love-hims and what-comes-nexts. From the beginning, there is no doubt of the soap operatic nature of the plot; the ‘narrative interjections’ as I might call them, imply as much.

Fast forward in time a bit and to provide some background on Adam relevant to Hetty, Dinah is visiting his mother in an effort to console her over the death of her husband (and Adam’s father). When speaking with Adam that night, the following description is given:

Dinah, with her sympathetic divination, knew quite well that Adam was longing to hear if Hetty had said anything about their trouble; she was too rigorously truthful for benevolent invention, but she had contrived to say something in which Hetty was tacitly included. Love has a way of cheating itself consciously, like a child who plays at solitary hide-and-seek; it is pleased with assurances that it all the while disbelieves.

In chapter 9, aptly subtitled “Hetty’s World”, we are provided with a measure of the inside mind of Hetty Sorrel, and the vanities which might later set her up for destruction.

“Hetty was quite used to the thought that people liked to look at her,” Eliot claims. In fact, she’s quite aware of the beauty that she has been given, and—to the extent that a young girl of the working/lower class can—uses it to her advantage. There was Kyle Britton at Hayslope Church, Mr. Craig the gardener (though he was “near forty”), and Adam Bede. Nevertheless, her view of the world is formed by social and familial pressures:

Hetty was quite certain her uncle wanted her to marry him. For those were times when there was no rigid demarcation of rank between the farmer and the respectable artisan…

…and though she [Mrs. Poyser] and her husband might have viewed the subject differently if Hetty had been a daughter of their own, it was clear that they would have welcomed the match with Adam for a penniless niece. For what could Hetty have been but a servant elsewhere, if her uncle had not taken her in and brought her up as a domestic help to her aunt…

Yet, she is not terribly interested in Adam, but “she liked to feel that this strong, skilful, keen-eyed man was in her power…” In her mind, she is fully in control of this admirer, and “took care to entice him back into the net by little airs of meekness and timidity, as if she were in trouble as his neglect.” Subtle mastery over her admirers is a matter of pride for Hetty. In her prescribed world of milking cows and babysitting younger family members, she has but one natural advantage.

In my next entry on Adam Bede, I will attempt to look at how the entry of Arthur Donnithorne changes this equation for Hetty.

The Modern Dash Projects

To assist me in organizing information, I will be—over time—initiating topic-related projects. As relates to The Modern Dash, the goal of these projects will be to help facilitate conversation and allow for the metaanalysis of literature and other art related to the study of Modernism.

As an ongoing TMD project, I will explore the short story as it relates to Modernism. I have already touched upon stories by Irwin Shaw, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and James Joyce. There will be more to come! For example, already on the docket are future readings/analysis of works by Franz Kafka and Jorge Borges. I am particularly interested in the short stories that shed light on the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. So, there will be more Shaw and Fitzgerald. And to test the genesis of the short story as a narrative form, I’ll be reaching back to Victorian works and beyond.

I welcome any suggestions by TMD readers. Of course, keep in touch and help contribute to the Short Story Project.

The Short Story Project Key Questions

How did the short story arise as a mode of literary and rhetorical communication?

What restraints and freedoms are given to short story writers?

What is the “most efficient” method of narrative locomotion for the short story medium?

How does the short story serve Modernism as a literary/aesthetic movement?

Ideally (though I don’t have a specific date in mind) I will some day be able to answer these questions. Or, at least, I will be always progressing toward some final answer, ever refining the thoughts that give meaning and association to this topic.

Coming Soon: My Reflection on The Modern Dash

Within the next few weeks, I will be writing a reflection on what this web log means to me. Certainly, this site is young and has a lot of space to cover. However, I feel that I have gained a sizeable knowledge of how things will look in the future. The Short Story Project is a look at that future.

I am reading through George Eliot’s Adam Bede, and will be commenting on it in segments. Skipping the obligatory biographical information—for the moment—I’d like to get right to it.

The book follows the happenings of a cast of rural farmers, carpenters, preachers, and the like. It is ripe with pastoral motifs and, so far, deals heavily with the themes of romance, religion, and social/ecclesiastical structure, though I don’t know yet (in just these early chapters) how these are related.

For the first chapters of the book, I am principally interested in the curious example of a character being created to—as I see it—draw out the readers’ curiosity. I am referring to the nameless traveler.

The second chapter, titled “The Preaching”, has a young “prophetess” giving a passionate speech to some bystanders of the small town of Hayslope. Just before the scene, an unnamed character approaches:

…his thoughts were diverted by the approach of the horseman whom we lately saw pausing to have another look at our friend Adam, and who now pulled up at the door of the Donnithorne Arms.
‘Take off the bridle and give him a drink, ostler,’ said the traveler to the lad in a smock frock, who had come out of the yard at the sound of the horse’s hoofs.
‘Why, what’s up in your pretty village, landlord?’ he continued, getting down. ‘There seems to be quite a stir.’
‘It’s a Methodis preaching, sir; it’s been gev hout as a young woman’s a-going to preach on the Green,’ answered Mr Casson, in a treble and wheezy voice, with a slightly mincing accent. ‘Will you please to step in, sir, an’ tek somethink?”
‘No, I must be getting on to Drosseter. I only want a drink for my horse. And what does your parson say, I wonder, to a young woman preaching just under his nose?’

While the true identity of the man is not revealed here, I think he plays an integral part in this scene. Shortly after:

The traveler put his horse into a quick walk up the village, but when he approached the Green, the beauty of the view that lay on his right hand, the singular contrast presented by the groups of villagers with the knot of Methodists near the maple, and perhaps yet more, curiosity to see the young female preacher, proved too much for his anxiety to get to the end of his journey, and he paused.

At this point early in the novel, Eliot has described several characters in physical detail, and almost all are given names, including Adam Bede, Seth Bede, and Dinah Morris. Yet, the first ‘action proper’ of the story (if you discount the opening description of the carpenters) involves the horseman. In the scene above, Eliot provides a physical context, and suspends the moment briefly to allow for insight into the character’s thoughts. He “put his horse into a quick walk” and “approached” the Green, then is explained as being struck by a “curiosity” and “anxiety”. Finally, when the sermon is over, he leaves Hayslope:

…[he] now turned his horse aside and pursued his way, while Dinah said, ‘Let us sing a little, dear friends;’ and as he was still winding down the slope, the voices of the Methodists reached him, rising and falling in that strange blending of exultation and sadness which belongs to the cadence of a hymn.

And so, he makes a simple exit, not affecting anybody or influencing the plot. For the reader, he serves as a narrative buoy, a figure whose reference by the author might provide stability after what is an emotional sermon by Dinah. The term “cadence” for me brings to mind the sound of the horse’s hoofs as they tread away from the singing, perhaps an apt comparison to the reader’s leaving the scene behind (well, the chapter ends!).

What do we know about the horseman? He is described as “elderly” and as carrying a portmanteau (19th century suitcase). He is unfamiliar with the town, but recognizes its beauty. He does not talk like the citizens of Hayslope and the surrounding areas, as can be seen by the first quote, above (no, those aren’t misspellings). Mr Casson, with whom the stranger speaks at the onset of chapter 2, explains the native language of “this country”:

They’re cur’ous talkers i’ this country, sir; the gentry’s hard work to hunderstand ‘em. I was brought hup among the gentry, sir, an’ got the turn o’ their tongue when I was a bye. Why, what do you think the folks here says for “hevn’t you”?—the gentry, you know, says “hevn’t you”—well, the people about here says, “hanna yey.” It’s what they call the dileck as is spoke hereabout, sir…
‘Ay, ay,’ said the stranger, smiling. ‘I know it very well…’

Perhaps the horseman is traveling to the big city, where they don’t speak the “dileck.” Certainly, his own speech is not in line with this style, yet he is familiar with it, though this is unexplained. This being my first reading of Adam Bede, I think Eliot is going out of her way to make the distinction between the two forms. This separation is alluded to—if you subscribe to the notion—in the situation between Seth and Dinah: Seth and his tendency to say “I canna think” and “thee artna going” against Dinah’s seemingly unblemished speech. They are of different natural groups, perhaps.

My curiosity about the role of the stranger in this story is enough to keep me reading. He is like me: a curious onlooker anxious about the end result, but aware that the show must go on, just as Seth Bede is rejected by Dinah, yet the story continues on to perhaps new encounters.